2025 Rwanda Worlds storylines to watch, from Pogacar to Ferrand-Prévot

The long list of absent riders has made headlines in the months leading up to the World Championships, but the two most box office stars in the sport still top the bill among the elite men. Remco Evenepoel and Tadej Pogačar carried off the rainbow jerseys a year ago in Zurich - both men are back to defend their respective titles, and they also have their eyes on a double that has never been achieved among the elite men.

Evenepoel is chasing a third straight victory in the elite men’s time trial, and he is the logical favourite, but his chief opponent is a new one. The hilly Kigali route, with 680m of climbing crammed into 40km, dissuaded men like Filippo Ganna from making the trip, but it also convinced Pogačar to dust off his time trial bike in recent weeks.

Pogačar rolls down the start ramp as Evenepoel’s biggest rival, and the Belgian is wary of the threat posed. “When Pogačar sets his mind on something, it’s a sign that he feels ready for it,” he said. Evenepoel will expect to prevail in his specialist discipline, even if nothing seems to be beyond this particular iteration of Pogačar. 

A week later, meanwhile, the pair will have a rematch in the road race, where Pogačar’s status as the overwhelming favourite was only enhanced by his easeful showing at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal. On a course as demanding as Kigali, the strongest rider should prevail, and everything points to that man being Pogačar.

And yet, Evenepoel can never be written off. He has endured an ill-starred season and a disastrous Tour de France, but he quickly reset and took aim at the Worlds, hoping for a redemption akin to Bernard Hinault’s in Sallanches in 1980. That spirit can carry Evenepoel further than most against Pogačar.

It looked as though Pauline Ferrand-Prévot had been lost to road cycling during her time focusing on off-road racing, but she has compensated - and then some - in 2025. When she joined Visma | Lease a Bike last winter, the Frenchwoman set aside her mountain bike, but she gave herself a three-year window in which to achieve her dream of winning the Tour de France Femmes.

Ferrand-Prévot is well ahead of schedule, and she was a most dominant winner of the Tour de France Femmes in August, crushing all-comers, including Demi Vollering, to claim the title. The debate over her racing weight in the aftermath of the event shouldn’t distract from the simple fact that she was operating on another level to her rivals.

The performance, in turn, persuaded Ferrand-Prévot to revise her initial plans and add the Rwanda Worlds to her schedule. For a rider climbing as well as Ferrand-Prévot, the hilly course in Kigali was simply too good an opportunity to miss.

In recent years, the collective might of the Dutch squad has typically been the pre-race favourite among the elite women, and they will, of course, have a redoubtable team here with Vollering and Anna van der Breggen.

But Ferrand-Prévot, eleven years on from her title in Ponferrada, sets out as the rider to watch. It will be a real contest, but after a season already garlanded by Paris-Roubaix and Tour de France victory, it would be foolish to bet against her adding another rainbow jersey to her palmarès.

Africa’s cycling heritage is a longstanding one, but pathways for riders from the continent to the top level of the sport have always been complicated. Breakthroughs were few and far between, and too often dependent on circumstances in Europe. 

The first African team at the Tour de France, for instance, was a North African regional selection in 1950, and they won two stages, through Marcel Molinès and Custodio Dos Reis. But the team’s participation came about amid France’s attempts to retain its colonial possessions in North Africa, and after independence was achieved, the route for Algerian and Moroccan riders to the top level quietly disappeared.

The 21st century finally saw more concerted attempts to connect the cycling heartlands of Africa with the top level of the sport in Europe, but results have been mixed. In 2015, Eritrea's Merhawi Kudus and Daniel Teklehaimanot became the first Black African riders at the Tour. In 2024, their compatriot Biniam Girmay went a step further, winning three stages and the green jersey.

But Girmay’s success has been the exception rather than the rule. African riders still face many of the same impediments that hindered them in generations past. Visa problems, logistical issues and, in some cases, sheer prejudice have too often dissuaded teams from recruiting from Africa, as the former pro Robbie Hunter pointed out to Dan Challis: “The teams look at it and go, well, do we want to include an African rider that is complicated? That's possibly a visa issue? All this gets added up, and they go, should we rather just take a Swiss or an Italian or a French or a Belgian rider? And we all know the answer.”

There is a deeply problematic political backdrop to Rwanda’s hosting of the World Championships, namely that the event will serve as a propaganda opportunity for Paul Kagame’s regime. And, despite the UCI’s claims to the contrary, cycling and politics are always intertwined. On Friday, it emerged that journalist Stijn Vercruysse of Flemish public broadcaster was denied entry to Rwanda, apparently due to his critical reporting on the government.

But from a sporting standpoint, there is hope that the week of racing in Kigali, particularly at junior and under-23 level, will provide a platform for young African talent to shine on the world stage.

The symbolic importance of the event is not to be underestimated either. Though the difficulty of the parcours puts the rainbow jersey far beyond Girmay’s reach, Africa’s greatest rider has confirmed that he will line out at the head of the Eritrean team. 

In the elite women’s road race, meanwhile, Kim Le Court (Mauritius) will be among the contenders. But whatever the result, the spotlight on Africa is precious. “It is bigger than me,” Le Court told the BBC. “It is about showing that riders from small nations can be part of these historic moments.”

The Vuelta a España will, understandably, be remembered primarily for the outpouring of pro-Palestine protests across its three weeks, but one of the race’s most compelling subplots concerned Juan Ayuso and his conscious uncoupling from UAE Team Emirates-XRG.

The Spaniard began the race with nominal overall aspirations but then claimed they were all a media invention after his GC challenge imploded in week one. His long-touted divorce from UAE was announced in fractious circumstances on the rest day, but even amid that very public argument, Ayuso went about underscoring his talent by winning two stages. Of course, he also went about highlighting just why UAE were prepared to let him go by going AWOL at pivotal moments in teammate João Almeida’s race, but no matter.

All the while, Ayuso kept pointing out that his underlying aim for the Vuelta was to build his form for the World Championships in Rwanda. He had never subscribed to a Pogačar-centric view of the world, but his path was blocked by the Slovenian all the same. In Kigali, Ayuso finally has a chance to go head-to-head against his soon-to-be-ex-teammate, and it will be one of the most intriguing features of the race.

To add to the drama, the man who usurped Ayuso’s position in the UAE line of succession behind Pogačar arrives at the Worlds off the back of an astonishing sequence of results. Isaac del Toro has won 13 races in 2025, including four in eight days in Italy earlier this month. 

The Mexican has yet to be truly tested over Worlds distance – he was sixth in the under-23 race last year – but on his blistering recent form, he might well prove to be one of the very few to hold a candle to Pogačar.

In a year where UAE – 85 wins and counting – have dominated on all terrains, what odds a sweep of the podium in the elite men’s road race?

David Lappartient will be confirmed unopposed for another four years as UCI president next week, and the Rwanda Worlds will also mark his first major public appearance since the repeated protests against Israel-Premier Tech’s participation at the Vuelta a España.

The UCI was conspicuously silent for most of the race, leaving the Vuelta organisation and the riders themselves to try to manage a spiralling situation. After a tepid mid-race statement, the governing body finally weighed in more fully the day after the Vuelta finished, publishing a statement that looked to heap blame on the Spanish government of Pedro Sánchez. The irony, of course, is that the UCI’s statement decrying the “exploitation of sport for political purposes” was, in itself, a highly politicised act. 

Indeed, Lappartient – who, let’s not forget, continues to combine a career as a local politician in France with his various sports administration ambitions – may have inadvertently painted himself into a corner with this statement. After criticising Sánchez for, in his view, exploiting sport for political purposes, will Lappartient apply the same critique to Paul Kagame, cycling's host in Rwanda? One hopes somebody will put the question to Lappartient in the UCI president’s traditional Worlds press conference, particularly given that at least one journalist has been blocked from entering the country.

But more pressingly, the press conference will be an opportunity for journalists to query the UCI president directly on his stance on Israel’s participation in international cycling amid the country’s ongoing invasion of Gaza.

The contrast with the UCI’s swift decision to ban Russia and Belarus after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is stark, though hardly surprising. Cycling’s governing body, like most other sports, has fallen quietly into line with the inertia of the International Olympic Committee on the issue, just as it followed the IOC’s stance on Russia and Belarus three years ago.

The difference between cycling and most other sports, however, is that Israel’s presence in events is now beginning to have a visible and immediate impact. The repeated stoppages at the Vuelta posed a clear safety risk for the Israel-Premier Tech riders and, indeed, for the entire peloton. The pledges of places like the Canary Islands and Barcelona not to host major events with Israeli participation, meanwhile, will eventually start to hit the economy of the sport.

Lappartient has always been an expert at obfuscation, but the UCI president is now prevailing over a crisis that requires clarity and action. Eight years into the gig, it's still not clear if he is capable of either.